The Allotments

The Graythorp allotments were a central part of our lives, especially during the war years when they were our main source of food, supplying us with fresh vegetables as well as meat from the pigs, hens and rabbits. The pigs were the mainstay of the enterprise giving us pork, sausages and brawn. My father said, "The only part of the pig that’s not eaten is its squeak!" Pork was also used as a currency on the black market where it was exchanged for tea, sugar, etc.. The ships coming into the docks for repairs had Indian crews who would come to the village and barter for live chickens usually with tins of condensed milk. All this enterprise was illegal but my parents were never found out, more by good luck than anything else.

We had three horses. The first was called Prince. He had a quite nature and would let you ride him. He used to pull our flat cart that was painted red and yellow and always looked smart. We would take the pigs on the cart to Stockton market to sell as ‘porkers’. To me, going out on the cart was always an adventure. We went out in all weathers – me with a flour sack over my head and shoulders to keep out the cold and rain – to collect pigswill from the local army camps at Greatham. My father or uncle Dan drove the cart and, if the road was quiet, they would let me drive, which I always thought was great. (Interestingly, we drove the cart sitting on the left-hand side and not the right as we do in a car.) 

Prince lived a long life but I was sad the day I found him dead in his stable. The next horse we bought was called Peggy. My mother, uncle Dan and myself went to Barnard Castle horse market to buy her. (This was the very first time that I went into a public house. I had lemonade. Uncle Dan was very fond of Bass beer.) Peggy was a large horse and very skittish; she would not let you ride her and she was hard to handle when pulling the cart. One day she bolted whilst pulling the cart and I recall my brother Danny chasing after her to try to stop her, but she ended up back at the allotments before she stopped.

The third horse was called Major. He was brought to us from Salthome Farm by my brother-in-law Joe (Lily’s husband) who worked on the farm, which was owned by ICI. We used Major to plough the allotments into one large field in which we grew potatoes for the fish-and-chip shop. The fish came from a wholesale warehouse in Middlesbrough, just across the Transporter bridge. My brother Jimmy and I went on the bus two or three times a week to collect the fish and bring it back to Graythorp. The bus conductor made us put the fish under the stairs at the rear of the bus because of the smell. One day we were refused permission to get on the bus with the fish and we had to walk the three miles home carrying two stone of fish.

On a Sunday, all our cousins from Hartlepool came for tea and my mother would sit them down to homemade food, which she baked every day. I can still smell the bread and teacakes being baked in a wood-stoke oven and I remember watching the large bowl of dough rising in front of the fire … there was no going to the supermarket in those days. On sunny days my mother brought picnics to the allotments and we would eat in a wooden cabin that was always known as ‘The Tea Cabin’. The day of my parents’ silver wedding anniversary in 1945 **or 1946? Do you know the date and year?** we had a meal outside the house in the lane that ran between No. 46 and No. 69 (the houses were not numbered in consecutive order). I think most of the villagers were invited to it.